Mario Kart 8 & Splatoon Wii U Online Play Coming Back Tomorrow

Nintendo has announced that online play will resume for the Wii U titles Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon following their pause in March 2023. The reasoning given for the ceased service was due to an unspecified vulnerability. Thankfully, owners of these titles can anticipate online play being available again tomorrow, August 3, 2023.

You can view the full quoted message from Nintendo UK regarding this matter below:

“In March 2023, Nintendo paused network services for the Wii U games Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 to address a vulnerability related to online play. The issue has now been fixed, and so we will resume online play for these games based on the schedule below. Please accept our sincere apologies for the extended waiting period.

• 3 August 2023 Resume service
  • To resume online play, downloading a new update will be necessary for each title per the release timing noted above.

If further issues occur which make it difficult to continue supporting online play, we may have to discontinue the online play service for the Wii U games Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 at short notice. Should this occur, please note that offline play would continue to function normally.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.”

This news is pretty welcome, and it’s worth pondering how significantly the player count will rise.